Snow Day

I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina on the morning of January 24, 2000. It was a cool, quiet, but cloudy morning in the Piedmont when something happened that none of the meteorologists expected: it snowed. By the time the day was over, there was close to a foot of the white stuff on the ground.

Living in Florida most of my life, it was a bit of a culture shock for me. I had seen snow in Marietta, Georgia in 1996, and a few times in Charlotte that winter. But seeing nothing but snow all over the place and watching it blow around in the wind was something brand new to me, and I watched outside with a bit of awe.

I was working at a Walmart in southeast Charlotte during my stay there as a maintenance guy, keeping the store in “tiptop and cracker jack” shape, as my boss often said. The following night, with the snow still holding its own among temperatures in the teens, I went out to take in some shopping carts.

In the parking lot, I got introduced to the phenomena not cognisant amongst us Floridians known as black ice. I got introduced to it the hard way, slipping hard onto the pavement, but fortunately not breaking anything.

I thought to myself, laying there for a few seconds, “Welcome to weather outside of Florida.” A few months later, I was back where I belonged.